This was an interesting read. I'm a priori skeptical of the claim that choice of method is actually all that important, but the article did at least try to provide support:
"researchers estimate there's a percentage of kids — perhaps about 40 percent — who will learn to read no matter how they're taught." -- implying 60% are sensitive to method
'Goldberg decided to teach some of her students using the phonics program and some of her students using three cueing. And she began to notice differences between the two groups of kids. "Not just in their abilities to read," she said, "but in the way they approached their reading."'
And it does seem true that relying on pictures is fundamentally not reading. The whole-word and phonics approaches actually teach to read text, which is kind of the point of learning to read.
I was surprised to read that bit, because the graph earlier in the article shows the percentage of twelfth graders who can read as holding steadily around 40%. Implying that whatever we're doing is as good as doing nothing at all.
"researchers estimate there's a percentage of kids — perhaps about 40 percent — who will learn to read no matter how they're taught." -- implying 60% are sensitive to method
'Goldberg decided to teach some of her students using the phonics program and some of her students using three cueing. And she began to notice differences between the two groups of kids. "Not just in their abilities to read," she said, "but in the way they approached their reading."'
And it does seem true that relying on pictures is fundamentally not reading. The whole-word and phonics approaches actually teach to read text, which is kind of the point of learning to read.